Those Who Survive What Life Throws at Them

U of Ideas of General Interest -- August 1999 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]

FICTION Stories focus on those who survive what life throws at them

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Reviewers are raving about Jean Thompson's new collection of short stories, "Who Do You Love" (Harcourt Brace), but many of their reviews come with a warning label: "Caution, stories may seem sad and depressing." Critics typically use words like "bruised" and "desperate" to describe the edgy and disgruntled souls who inhabit Thompson's stories. A Boston Globe reviewer, however, recently called the work "a contemporary version of the modern epiphany, the moment of illumination -- bright or dark --- that makes a gray world bearable or unbearable."

The latter take is more in line with Thompson's intent. She sees her menagerie of scratched, chipped and dented people -- from her urban junkie to her dazed dumped wife -- as survivors. "This is just how it is," Thompson said. "Bad things happen to these people, but they come through to the other side, hopefully with a little bit of self-knowledge."

Case in point, said Thompson, an English professor at the University of Illinois, is Judy Applebee, the main character of the title story. Applebee, Thompson writes, is a city social worker, whose office "did not solve anyone's problems. It only took the edge off misery so that misery could be endured." When we meet Applebee, she is not only burned out, she has for all intents and purposes "lost it." Her coping mechanism is to treat herself to a nervous breakdown, as if it were a day at the spa.

"She's acting out all of her internal urges," Thompson said. "All her internal stuff becomes external. She's scared. She's out on the street making herself miserable and friendless. But eventually she says, 'OK, we've had our little tantrum and now we'll go home and pick up the pieces.' "

To be sure, Applebee's crisis is not all Sturm und Drang. In fact, at times it's downright funny. For example, in a half-hearted suicide attempt, Applebee swallows a handful of Valium and knocks back a large quantity of red wine. The phone rings. It is her mother, innocently asking: "How are you?" "I'm dying," her daughter says. "Darling, don't talk like that. Everybody has those days."

This use of irony and humor -- even during emotional meltdown -- is one way Thompson saves her characters from the slough of despair. Applebee's depression "is like an art form," Thompson concedes. "She's having a lot of fun with it." Most of Thompson's characters, in fact, "put a lot of energy into their depressions." Eventually, Applebee comes to realize that, "You can't walk around saying, 'Nobody loves me' if you don't love yourself." Examples of Thompson's wit and vision in "Who":

o (On teen-agers, such as the one in her story titled "Mercy") "If they were lucky they went into the service and stayed alive long enough to grow a brain."

o "Every day she practiced hating Jay. It was something to do, like stomach exercises."

o (In the nursing home) "Every morning when you got up, you hung a GOOD MORNING sign on your door, to show you were still alive."

-ael-